3 Book Reviews submitted by our Members...sorted by voted most helpful

Ellen is a child sinned against from every quarter: the beloved brother who rapes and impregnates her, her mother (The Woman) who calls her ugly and sinful, her father (The Husband) who abandons her, the root worker who plays out her greed for money and power on the body of a child, and shamed by her church. When she shows up at home with semen on her dress (from a man who used her because she was powerless), she is beaten and shamed for the worthless trash she is. (Book was written around the time of Monica Lewinsky and "the blue dress".) When the neighbor lady takes an interest in Ellen and styles her hair, The Woman cuts the hair off and applies a painful "treatment" for ringworm. At the age of 11, Ellen is still wetting the bed, dragging her smelly, buggy mattress outdoors every day, until the cinch bug gets in her ear and she has to go to the doctor. When The Woman is embarrassed that Ellen has a bug in her ear, the mattress goes up in smoke and Ellen is forced to sleep on a plastic sheet on the hard floor. What is the secret that started this journey to hell for a poor girl child? And how can she negotiate the cruelty of her family without bringing shame on them all? This is a masterful book. Painful but masterful.